


Legal Jargon

by iopeneditbeforechristmas



Series: numbers written on coffee cups [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 05:08:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6552265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iopeneditbeforechristmas/pseuds/iopeneditbeforechristmas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which John is ridiculously cheerful, Terezi is introduced to his sister, and nothing about the Egbert-Crocker family tree makes sense anymore unless John is adopted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legal Jargon

**Author's Note:**

> you should all ship janerezi because it is pure and ~beautiful~

When planning out her future career prospects, Terezi never really imagined herself as a matchmaker. In fact, she’d actively really not imagined herself as a matchmaker at all, because seriously, who did that? Terezi was going to be a lawyer, _obviously._

So considering that she’d now got two of her friends together merely through sheer force of meddling and offhandedly mentioning two different coffee shops she liked, had therefore also indirectly contributed to two of their friends (one of whom was sort of also her friend, but that was less relevant) together, and was also only a year into her degree, matchmaker was starting to look a lot more likely than lawyer.

It was all really rather depressing.

“Come on Terezi, cheer up!” said John cheerfully. Cheerful. Why was he always so cheerful? How was it possible to conjure up so much positivity, contain it all in one not insignificant but not exactly large body and then projectile vomit it at everyone else in the vicinity? It was almost indecent how happy John managed to be all the time.

“Do not tell me to cheer up, Mr Egbert,” Terezi replied with an insane amount of dignity. “I am reading very boring legal books and am not in the mood.”

“Aww, Terezi,” John pouted. “Don’t be such a downer. Who says you can’t read legal books and by happy?”

“John. We both know you are no fool. If there is one person currently holding this conversation who knows whether or not legal books can allow one to feel happy or not, it is not you.”

“There are three people in this fucking conversation, idiot,” Karkat said. He was sitting on the bench opposite Terezi and complaining loudly about anthropology every so often. It was adorable.

“Actually, if you count Mr Strider, there are four,” said Terezi.

“Dave isn’t actually in the conversation though,” John pointed out.

“Nah, dude, I’m totally in this conversation,” said Dave, who according to John was lying stretched out with his head on Karkat’s lap and only pretending to read. It sounded supremely uncomfortable, but hey, who was Terezi to judge how someone shared physical contact with their boyfriend? She and Dave had spent their short-lived relationship doing a lot of hand-holding and nothing more, because teenage Dave and Terezi were awkward and dysfunctional, so she didn’t really have a moral leg to stand on here.

“I beg to differ,” she sniffed in response to Dave’s scandalous accusation of involvement. “You arrived here five minutes ago – ten minutes after we were supposed to meet, I might add! – with what smells suspiciously like Starbucks and began pretending to read your book! After that you have not contributed in any way to the development of this conversation.”

“Dude, you’re so guilty,” John sniggered.

“John, do not try to take the legal jargon from me. I am the master of the legal jargon.”

“Terezi Pyrope,” Dave said, “Most feared lawyer this side of the galaxy, master of the courtrooms. The legal jargon is her bitch. Witnesses tremble at the prospect of being cross-examined by her fucking awesome lawyering skills. Egbert, you are screwed.”

“Aww, but I can’t go to prison. I have a dad! And a sister!”

“You have a sister?” Terezi asked, frowning. This was a new and unforeseen development.

“Yeah, dude, have you never seen the girl with the dark hair and the glasses and the buck teeth? That’s my sister.”

“I thought Jade was your cousin?”

“Not Jade, you fucking moron,” snapped Karkat, “Jane.”

“That is far too few letters in between those two names. These people are a family. At least given them some way of distinguishing between each other.”

“She’s got a point,” said Dave.

“I know,” John sighed. “We all used to mix up presents and stuff until we just decided to use our chum handles because it was easier.”

“That…actually makes some kind of sense,” Dave said, nodding. “Good going, Egbert-Crocker-Harley-English family.”

“John, what even is your family?” Terezi asked. “You all seem impossibly cheerful and you have really stupid names.”

“Hey, John’s not a stupid name! And actually neither’s Jane. Or Jade. Or Jake.”

“Those are three names in the same family with one letter’s difference. I should be revising the law books as we speak to make that illegal.”

“Tereziiiiiiii, stop being so annoyed about my family’s names!”

“Joooooooohn, stop spending time with Vriska, you’re copying her vowel hang-up.”

“But Vriska’s kind of my girlfriend? So I should probably hang out with her, or something. Still, my sister’s really nice. I’ll introduce you sometime!”

“Sure, Egbert. Whatever you say.”

***

John did, in fact, end up introducing Terezi and Jane, when Terezi was not reading legal books and instead making her way through a very interesting mystery novel. It was the butler. He had a suspicious moustache. She was interrupted from it by a wave of blue; John, obviously, but also the girl who was apparently his sister. She smelled infuriatingly nice, sugary like cake mixture, but also like fresh air and an upsettingly pleasant aqua colour.

“You must be Terezi,” she said. Her voice was calm, unlike John, who Terezi just knew was all but bouncing up and down excitedly because friends! Introducing people! Yay!

It wasn’t that Terezi hated John. In fact, she found it impossible. It was just that she really wished she could.

“John’s told me lots about you,” Jane continued.

“That’s hardly surprising. John is very good at telling people all about people. I, for example, know that you are a skilled baker with a talent for business and a liking for bad mystery novels.”

Jane laughed. Terezi heard her pull out a chair and sit down. This was shaping up to be a very long, Egbert-filled day.

“Well, he’s right, I guess,” Jane said. “I am studying commerce. I don’t know about the talent, though.”

“How fantastically modest, Miss Egbert. Unfortunately, I cannot fault you, because mystery stories really are very good, bad or not.”

“Crocker, actually. John and I are only half siblings.”

And so the plot thickened. Terezi was finding herself reluctantly impressed by Miss Crocker, and her no-nonsense attitude. It really was too bad she was related to John. Though how, that was the question.

“Are you sure you’re siblings?” she said. “Only there seems to have been none of the good traits left over by the time the gene pool came round to John.”

“Came _around,_ ” Jane corrected.

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s actually came around, not came round. Sorry. Grammar’s a guilty pleasure of mine.”

“…Or perhaps they were all taken up before your turn as well,” Terezi said. It really was too bad how interesting she was starting to find Jane.

Jane laughed. Of all things, she laughed _._

“Miss Crocker. Jane. Are you sure all your mental capacities are in functioning order? Because I just insulted both yourself and your brother, and to that extent everyone ever related to you.”

Jane laughed again. “Don’t worry, I understand. He’s so unbearably _nice,_ it can get on one’s nerves just a little.”

Terezi inclined her head, because Jane was interesting _,_ and smart, and also nice without being overbearing, and Terezi was beginning to find herself just the tiniest bit smitten. Possibly some sort of predictably cheesy pick-up line was in order.

Though, of course, she was Terezi Pyrope and she was in no way _predictable._ Well, not very, anyway. She continued talking, because not doing so would just be mean, absent-mindedly scrawling something on the cardboard coffee cup she’d been drinking from before John had dumped this pile of intrigue and pedantry in her life. When she left, which was abruptly and in the middle of a sentence, because why not, Terezi placed the coffee cup very deliberately in front of Jane and walked off. It might end up being a bit hard to read, on account of occasionally forgetting where she’d put the previous number, but Jane would pick it up in confusion, probably, and then see Terezi’s number, definitely, and then call her. Hopefully.


End file.
